Hey, Yeah... Ron Lee

It was pointed out that Ron Lee's sudden absence from the Michigan staff passed without mention here; that it did. That occasionally happens when I throw something up on the Fanhouse that's specifically Michigan-related.

Expanding on the above-linked: Lee did seem unable to get any of his charges to improve in hindsight, but that's just hindsight. Remember when we were big fans of Morgan Trent? Yeah, that was about eight games into the season. Maybe more. Once you got past Hall the cornerback talent Lee was presented with was mediocre at best. Anyone who's followed this blog over the past couple years knows that Michigan's been snakebit at corner in recruiting. A full list of those available to Lee:

• Hall. Granted, he's very good.
• Trent. Fast as hell but seemingly incapable of cutting fast enough to bother anyone on short routes. (This may be the much-referred-to "hips" and "swivel" jargony football experts throw out on draft shows.) Was rated and came to Michigan as a wide receiver and sort of looks like a wide receiver out there.
• Charles Stewart. Future safety. Destroyed in game against Minnesota.
• Johnny Sears. Redshirt freshman sleeper who was clearly not ready. One year of varsity high school football before coming here. Lee can't really be blamed for his struggles, nor should Sears be written off just yet.
• Brandon Harrison. Five-eight guy who bounced to safety and back, played in the nickel this year. Main contribution was missing a few tackles, IIRC.

This is the long way of saying that whatever the reasons for his hasty departure, they probably aren't entirely, or even mostly, about the secondary's struggles at the end of the year. (Safeties were supposedly still coached by English, though it seems odd to have one coach for just the cornerbacks.)

So what else is there? Recruiting, I guess. It's been widely speculated that the staff shakeup last offseason was a major factor in Michigan's crappy recruiting year (other factors: 7-5 2005, ill-advised decision to split Michigan recruiting up amongst various staff members, general bloody-mindedness of the universe). Perhaps Lee was a part of that, and if you're going to have a guy who only coaches a few players, especially when your DC is a secondary coach, he'd better be a bang-up recruiter in the Orgeron mold.

So there's my completely unfounded speculation as to the reasons Lee was let go and a projection for his replacement: a pretty face who coaches "the secondary" but mostly goes into people's homes and steals the athletic children. So a Viking. Nordic hhhyyyyarr.